Pa. hospital 'cuddler' gives babies loving touch

LANCASTER -- Hazel Weaver is getting her weekly baby fix, and Maggi is getting a grandmother's arms to surround her as she snoozes in the Hershey Medical Center's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Weaver, a 70-year-old New Holland resident, is calm and assured as she cradles Maggi, a tiny Lebanon County baby who was born at the end of July and weighs less than 5 pounds.

This mother of three and grandma of eight already knew her way around a baby when she began volunteering several years ago as a "cuddler," someone who comes in to simply hold babies at the NICU.

With a soft cloud of golden hair, dressed in shirt, slacks and sensible shoes, Weaver rocks ever so slightly as she gazes down at Maggi, who holds her arms out straight in front of her as she slumbers.

All around Weaver and Maggi is the high-tech world where the tiniest and sickest of babies are cared for: beeping heart monitors, feeding tubes that get hooked up to other machines, oxygen sensors and other gizmos. From the bottom of Maggi's blanket are several wires that hook her to her own machines.

But the focus here is a pair of arms and a sleeping baby.

Drawn to the cuddler position by a small newspaper article calling for volunteers, Weaver had to undergo police clearances and fingerprint checks, as well as go through a general hospital orientation.

Other than that, she was on her own, though she really didn't need a lot of direction for the job.

"They don't give you any training," she said. "You have to hold the head up. And you can't drop it."

Weaver, who is retired from her job as a lab technician at Tyson Foods, downplays her role as a cuddler, saying she has the easy job when compared with the nurses and parents of the tiny babies.

"I'd rather coochy-coo them and send them home," she says. "I don't have to remember if this baby gets breast milk or bottle fed."

The cuddler program began in 1999 at Hershey, to supplement the care of the babies in the hospital's 35-bed NICU.

Nurses are often busy feeding, monitoring, changing or administering medications or medical care to the babies here, some who have been born too early, some who have complex medical conditions and others who have both backgrounds.

Parents cannot always be in the unit with the babies, due to work or other commitments. Some moms decide to postpone their maternity leave until after their babies leave the hospital.

That's where the 17 cuddlers, many of them grandmotherly types like Weaver, fill the void.

Infants simply need to be touched and held, particularly in an environment where they are often poked and prodded as part of their medical care.

When a baby is held, her heart rate and breathing are steady and slower. When a baby is touched, studies show that he sleeps better and gains more weight.

"To have human contact is so important," says Patricia Avakian, interim nurse manager at the NICU. "It helps them to feel secure and all of their body systems respond to that."